A Modern Take on Modern War.

2010.04.28

I remember first hearing about Joseph Nye's notion of 'soft power' from this video, given by Shashi Tharoor. I was intrigued at how Tharoor suggested that through sporting events, he uses the Beijing Olympics as an example, we might foster improvements in international relations.

He suggests that while India is economically strong, militarily powerful, in possession of nuclear weapons and extremely populous, this is not a fair measure of power in the modern age. He suggests that their telecommunications network is a clear marker of them. He gives examples of fishermen informing the seaside towns what fish they have; coconuts being ordered by men in trees with cell phones.

Tharoor points out also that: "In today's world, it's not the side with the bigger army that wins. It's the country that tells the better story that prevails." This beautiful statement is a vital observation about the future of power projection and the West's desire to increase the number of democratic states, and states that are friendly to us.

This piece from the Helmand Blog, of the UK Forces Media Ops in Helmand province at Camp Bastion demonstrates the strength of soft power.

2010.04.27

Having just completed a dissertation on the perceived advantages of robotics in modern conflict (and coming to the conclusion that they are only useful in highly defined situations), this is interesting.

The complexity of any situation in a counterinsurgency operation cannot be met by anything as linear as this.

This quote is telling: "In General McMaster’s view, PowerPoint’s worst offense is not a chart like the spaghetti graphic, which was first uncovered by NBC’s Richard Engel, but rigid lists of bullet points (in, say, a presentation on a conflict’s causes) that take no account of interconnected political, economic and ethnic forces. “If you divorce war from all of that, it becomes a targeting exercise,” General McMaster said." Particularly McMaster's comment about COIN becoming a targeting exercise.

2010.04.23

I wrote this several weeks ago, while I was waiting to fly out to Ohio to visit Katy. Sitting in places with nothing better to do and a notebook and paper apparently makes me write about them. I just remember being reinvigorated seeing the Multi-faith prayer room sign. It made me think about all the people who pass through "globalization's legacy". Some many different creeds, cultures, beliefs. All made to be the same, if only for a brief moment.

And so, to paraphrase Stephen Wright: "I wish when I'd started this, I could have written 'Quote', so when it's finished, I could write 'Unquote'."

"Quote:

International airports are epitome of globalization’s legacy. Multi-faith prayer rooms. By default, people from all countries. All ages and abilities. All kinds of stories. A great place to people watch. People stopped at random by metal detectors. Utter trust. The arbitrary questions. Did you pack this yourself? Of course, you did, but it’s your word against his. And you’re trusted. This might be a touch optimistic from this seat in departures.

But you don’t have to be optimistic.

The failure rates are astonishingly low.

The standards far higher than many of globalization’s other glorious creations.

The internet, for instance, is constantly “letting people down”. And yet, my desire to mimic historic people like Hemingway and Picasso, coupled with the “it’s so nice to write on/well made” cliché, drove me to Moleskines. Ironically however, this will be first read here, on this blog. Even though I’ve written it here. It’s here for posterity, but it will be online forever.

Is it more ‘real’ because it’s hand written?

Does it mean something more?

International airports make me very optimistic about the future.

Partly because of the levelling aspect. No matter “who you are” (unless you have your own jet), you have to go through the same machinations. Everyone goes through the metal detectors. Everyone must agree to be searched, tacitly or otherwise. Even the pilots get on through the same gate. Everyone has their passport checked. Largely people accept this.

This is interesting. One doesn’t notice ego at airports. People are patient. (Not withstanding Louis Black’s bit on the way people eulogize their experiences.) Things happen when they happen. It’s almost Dao-esque. The acceptance of the present.

2010.03.17

I just watched Waltz With Bashir on the recommendation of the chaps at the Kings of War blog. Very impressive. Very depressing. It’s been a week for that, I think. I watched The Hurt Locker on Saturday. After that it was difficult to drum enthusiasm to go to my ‘day job’ at a bar in town.

Waltz with Bashir is a great film. It deals carefully with its subject matter. It was illuminating to me. I know very little about genocide. I don’t really know why it is that I don’t know much about it. I’ve spent three years (nearly) studying war.

I think that this is the case because I can’t bring myself to understand it.
War, I understand.
Terrorism, I understand.

I can see both sides of the use of terrorism. Occasionally it can be justified. Genocide makes no sense. I am open to suggestions of literature to peruse so that I might understand this utterly reprehensible side of human nature.

War serves a purpose. To put it as crudely as Clausewitz, it’s an extension of policy by other means. Much as I dislike the use of Clausewitz in a modern context—especially since reading Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife—some of what he said was insightful. Some of it highly applicable to modern conflict.

Terrorism has similar motivations to conventional state-on-state war. It’s not moral, by any means. But it is understandable. It’s almost Clausewitzian in that sense—extension of policy... Terrorism is the application of policy by other means.
Genocide. What is genocide? I’ve studied the Holocaust. I understand what happened. I understand something of the reasoning behind it, I suppose. Especially from the parts of Mein Kampf that I’ve read. But I can’t understand the rationale behind it.
Genocide, to me, is neither moral nor understandable.
Someone please point me in the direction in terms of the rationale behind genocide.

2010.02.18

I began my counterinsurgency (COIN) journey only very recently. But I have made headway. I’m reading Thompson at the moment (probably half way through), John Nagl’s Eating Soup With A Knife arrived in the post yesterday. I am also reading Pete Mansoor’s Baghdad at Sunrise.

These books, and discussions with ArmitageShanks, have helped increase my understanding of the ways in which soldier-scholars perceive COIN. It seems that the recent Operation Moshtarak is counterintuitive counterinsur-gency.

To quote, at length, from Robert Thompson:

“rebuilding of [a] country so that it can once again become economically and politically stable and viable … cannot be achieved merely by the application of absolute force to the situation. It is just possible that force might achieve a temporary victory; but it would leave almost every single internal problem unsolved. You cannot win the game merely by changing the rules.”

By implementing the use of force in Moshtarak, NATO and its Afghan partners are contravening this basic tenet of COIN. This article at the Kings of War blog, makes a good deal of sense to me, in terms of a firm criticism of NATO’s mission.

I was skeptical when I started reading it; the whole Olympic analogy took a while to make sense, but this part in particular caught my eye:

“As hard as it may be, there are metrics involved in figuring this out. There must be, because there is no end to officials–NATO and national officials, military and civilian–who claim that ‘things are getting better’ all the time. Their yardsticks include ‘number of ISAF soldiers killed’, ‘number of IEDs discovered’, ‘percentage of Afghan civilians who support the central government’, etc. etc. Kinda like ‘artistic interpretation’ in Ice Dancing: its all in the eye of the beholder.”

The idea of interpretive metrics strikes me as being very similar to the way in which the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) operates. From my experience studying the drugs war in Afghanistan, I found that the UNODC will frequently use poor metrics to prove a point, when, just like all statistics, they can be interpreted in myriad ways, to serve a plethora of purposes.

“Balkh province may be poppy-free, but its center, Mazar-i Sharif, is awash in drug money. Nangarhar was also poppy-free in 2008, although it still remains a province where a large amount of opiates is trafficked.”

Further evidence of this from a report by David Mansfield and Adam Pain from the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit:

“The problems associated with assessing counter-narcotics achievements purely in terms of the hectarage of opium poppy grown are compounded by confusion over attribution. […] For example, reductions in the level of cultivation in the north, northeast and central provinces are primarily attributed to successful counter-narcotics efforts.[1] Yet due to an overall rise in global food prices, the more recent decline in opium price, the Government of Pakistan’s ban on wheat exports and lower rainfall in Afghanistan, there has been a signiﬁcant shift away from opium poppy in favour of the terms of trade on wheat.”

So the assessment by the Faceless Bureaucrat at the Kings of War blog is entirely fair. The American Army, despite writing books and articles until it is blue in the face, appears incapable of learning on the fly, as is vital when running counterinsurgency operations.[2] We shall see what happens as the operation progresses, but I remain pessimistic about it's long term prospects.

2010.02.17

I'm in the final year of my degree now and struggling to get my dissertation to make sense. But I’m struck frequently by the notion that I’m going about it wrong. I’m looking for “The Answer”.

This is optimistic to the point of insanity. I have been taught, throughout my training in sociology, that there is no “right” answer; that it is not possible to “know” something completely. However, my genetic predisposition to empiricism (i.e. I’m English—read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers) makes me seek certainty, to “know” everything.

I am coming to realise, through various media, however, that this can never be the case. There will always be people who “know” more than me, just I will always know more than some people.

True polyglot status is reserved only for those whose minds are wired that way. What frustrates me is, knowing that I’ll never know everything, what is it important for me to know, and how do I know when I know all that I need to know. (When did I turn into Donald Rumsfeld?)

My pursuit of knowledge gives me great pleasure; I hope to learn something new on my deathbed. But I feel like, sometimes this endless pursuit of knowledge can lead only to more confusion and misunderstanding.

In this TED talk from this time last year, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita gives a compelling argument for Iran’s future based on computer modelling. He suggests that, if left alone, Iran may well seek to increase its holdings of enriched uranium, but that it will not develop nuclear weapons. The analysis of Iran begins around 13 minutes.

He suggests also that, whether left alone or not, Iran will not seek nuclear weapons. So Iran’s ramping up of its UAV programme in response to tough talk from Israel, while useful for my dissertation, is only creating unnecessary tension in the Middle East.

It seems to me, that the world is trapped in a perpetuation of Cold War tensions. Now that the 90’s have ended, we’ve had our blowout, we need something else to be worried about.

Armitage Shanks, over at Full Force of the Wind, has a slightly different take on this. Although, his quote from LeMonde is revealing. The French seem to agree with me and de Mesquita. Iran should be left alone, because she doesn’t pose a threat.

I would take it a little further and say that the US should not impose sanctions, because, as Nicholas Kristof pointed out in 2003, Sanctions Don’t Work. He states that “sanctions … aren't a policy; they're a feel-good substitute for one.”

That’s all this is. The US is responding to Iranian ‘posturing’ with some ‘posturing’ of its own to reassure its public and the public of the world that it is interested. That it can do nothing about the situation seems irrelevant.

All of this could, I believe, lead to a mini-Cold War in the Middle East:

Iran scared

Israel emboldened by aggressive US defence policies

The post-national WEU sitting back feeling superior, without the necessary humility to simply allow the US and the Middle East to realise their own errors.

This intrigues me. Today I was contemplating this portion of Lao-tzu's 65th Verse of the Tao Te Ching:

– “When they think that they know the answers,
people are difficult to guide.
When they know that they don't know,
people can find their own way.”

2010.02.08

Two news stories piqued my interest today. This one on the latest ISAF offensive in Afghanistan. And this on Iran's nuclear programme.

To address the Afghan story first, two things strike me. Firstly, it seems that Operation Moshtarak, a huge offensive to forcibly remove the Taliban from Helmand province, is counter to what NATO is working towards in Afghanistan. Stability in Afghanistan will come from breaking the cycles of corruption and handing security of the country over to a competent indigenous Afghan police force and army.

Now, according to The Telegraph, moshtarak is the Dari word for 'together'. This makes sense because NATO's mission in Afghanistan is to train and prepare the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police (ANP), but it seems to me that a massed infantry assault is not likely to achieve the result of winning the favour of the locals. This especially in view of what Hamid Karzai has demanded recently. Not to mention frequently throughout his presidency.

One encouraging thing to come out of the whole affair though: the realistic stance taken by the British defence community. For so long, they have pretended to the people that this war would be winnable without any kind of casualties. For too long, we have been asked to be surprised that soldiers die in battle. But today, Bob Ainsworth issued this remark:

“We shouldn't deny or pretend to people that casualties are not a very real risk on these kind of operations and people have to be prepared for that.
This is not a safe environment and it doesn't matter how much kit and equipment we provide for them, we cannot entirely make these operations risk-free.”

This is refreshing honesty about the situation. Perhaps some more of this, and the pacificistic cries of “End the War, Bring the Troops Home!” ignoring the responsibility NATO and the US created for itself in invading Afghanistan and ousting the Taliban in the first place, will be out-weighed by the sense and the reasoned argument of people like Stephen Biddle in The American Interest, last July might cut through and demonstrate that Afghanistan is ‘winnable’, whatever that means. (Perhaps that will be the subject of another post.)

To move on to the second news article I am interested in. Iran’s decision to begin enriching uranium for medical research purposes.
I am writing an essay on US nuclear policy since the end of the Cold War.

This story is interesting to me in this context, because it feels like a mini-Cold War is being played out in the Middle East. With Israel playing the capable military superpower (read the US) and Iran the embattled also ran (read the Soviet Union).
Iran, according to Ahmadinejad, is enriching uranium for medical testing purposes. Unfortunately, as the modern world remains tied by the apron strings to the safety of the Cold War, Western governments are refusing to believe reports from Tehran. This is saddening, as it is increasing the tensions between Iran and Israel needlessly. It is also depressingly similar to the Cold War and tensions between the US and USSR.

I wonder if the world will shake off the overcoat of Cold War stability and embrace Samuel Huntington’s idea of a uni-multipolar world.

I am becoming accustomed to reading policy documents, which I first started doing when I wrote an essay for Professor David Bewley-Taylor. This essay, the best grade achieved so far, was enjoyable to write, partly because of the engagement with primary sources. Comparing different, contemporary primary sources was fascinating, as was cross-referencing with other secondary sources, notably David Macdonald's Drugs in Afghanistan and Alfred McCoy's Politics of Heroin.

I am enjoying researching for the essay for America and the Bomb. So far the essay is about 50% complete, in terms of word count. It needs a good amount of structuring and some more background reading. I have a stack of books on US foreign policy at my left elbow, from which I am cherry-picking important pieces--term papers tend not to allow for a great deal of depth when reading.

2009.12.21

I often talk with a friend about how much we know. And in the same discussions, we talk about how little we know. It is a strange phenomenon. To be learning so much, all the time, and still feel very uninformed.

There are very few topics on which I feel like I know enough to hold a decent conversation. That’s not to put myself down I’m capable enough, but I feel now, the more I find that I don’t know, the less confident I am in some ways.

The adage goes “Ignorance is bliss.” Although it’s only partly true, it’s true nonetheless. Not knowing about something makes it easier to exist, in some instances. Another saying goes: “The more you know, the more you know.” While this one is also true, I think a better rendering of it would be: “The more you know, the more you realise how little you know.” Maybe not as catchy, but truer, I think.

It’s certainly true for me. My current term paper is on the European Union. Specifically, the question is: “Will the EU ever be a military superpower?”

I picked the question because I knew that I had no idea about this field. It’s only now that I’ve started researching it that I realise how little I really know, and how much there is to know about it. I’m getting there now, but it’s taking me a long time. Whenever I feel like I’m getting somewhere, I come across something that I feel like I should understand more fully.

A similar situation arose when I picked a question on the problem of narcotics in Afghanistan. I knew nothing about the topic, so I researched as thoroughly as I could, and it turned out, more thoroughly than I needed to. I developed a strong understanding of the topic. I am confident now, when I talk about it.

My problem, I think, is that I desire too much detail in what I am understanding, so when I find a new concept in a book, I need to understand it too fully before I can more on. Maybe this is out of fear of missing something crucial that might change my argument.

I think that I need to develop some kind of confidence to triage and know that I will never know, or read everything on a topic. It won’t stop me wanting to know.